Other than to crank out an art-horror pic for the holidays, was there a compelling reason to make a movie out of the ordeal of Aron Ralston, the avid Utah hiker who spent several days with his arm pinned under a boulder in the spring of 2003?
For all I know the man may be a philosopher king in real life, but even as played by the wonderfully mercurial James Franco, the Aron in Danny Boyle’s frenetically busy 127 Hours doesn’t have enough soul to justify our spending a whole movie squeezed into a crevice with him.
Still, when first we meet Aron prepping for a solo weekend in canyon country, he promises to be an engagingly contradictory pain in the behind. (He’s certainly a lot more appealing than that Eeyore-ish dude who went Into the Wild under the aegis of Sean Penn.) An exuberant, resourceful loner, Aron is perpetually high on life, good at brief encounters with strangers and laboring under the impression that he’s in charge of nature rather than the other way about.
In other words, he’s a callow youth ripe for some humble pie, and since Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) is not a man to waste precious action time on character development, the elements are busy having their wicked way with our hero within minutes.
After a brief frolic with two party-girl climbers played by Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn, who deserve better than being bosom-fodder for Boyle’s bobbing, weaving lens, Aron heads off happily alone, accompanied by a thumping soundtrack and, for bonus kinesis, much fancy footwork from the cameras of two cinematographers.